DISGUISED BY THE CHAMELEONS, the cart high-tailed it for the pass. Ashueli drove like a woman possessed. The road remained decent and easy to follow, a white strip crossing the middle of a bleak plain strewn with obsidian boulders, where the only growth appeared to be mosses and lichens.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Sabline bellowed in the back of the cart.

“You’re deaf, Sabline. The sonic –”

“GREAT BATTLE, WASN’T IT? DID YOU SEE HOW I AMBUSHED THOSE DRAGONS?”

Allory made a show of covering her pointy ears.

“OH! Oh, mrrr-hrrrm. I wondered why everyone was mouthing insults at me,” she grinned, leaning against a crate to help her balance. “See to the others. I’ll be fine.”

Typical Sabline.

Flicking her wings to take her up onto the Felidragon’s back, Allory walked up to her head and laced her fingers into the shorter, silky fur atop her skull. Appearances to the contrary, the Dragoness was not fine. How could she tolerate this degree of pain without showing a single sign? The old malady rose like fire within her body. Slowly, Allory’s gaze moved over the strange – and ever stranger – collection of people in the back of the cart. All these different manifestations of magic doing increasingly bizarre or extreme things. Fire. Ice. Sparkle. An Elf who moved with supernatural speed. Giants driven mad. What might they discover in a Purewish Fae or those other two Elves, who appeared to be twins?

Yaarah was more than right. Not only was Middlesun imbalanced, but so was the fundamental magic of their realm and perhaps all Spheris.

Leaning over, she smiled into Sabline’s eye. “All good.”

When did I become a freaking liar?

When she had not a note of a healing song left in her. When despair struck her soul speechless. She needed recentre herself as Inixipi the Healer Sage had taught her and find her inner sanctum of healing power, but how could one do that in the face of conflict, turmoil and death?

So hard to be the sweet little sparkle.

How she wished she could just grit her teeth like one of these warriors and get on with what was needed. She’d learn. Her fists clenched into tiny knots. Gnarr … tough Sparkles!

Ahem. Chuckle.

Kicking off her perch, Allory flew to the front to join the Princess at the driver’s position. An elegant hand-twirl offered permission before she landed on the Elf’s left shoulder, steadying herself by dint of a grip upon a tall pointy ear and a hank of sable hair. For ten or fifteen long minutes, all she did was point out potholes and in one instance what appeared to be a dead body lying in the left half of the road.

All the while, the great dark peaks leaned in closer and closer, until she realised that only Dragons of Yaarah or Sabline’s size could have fit into the gap that greeted them. No bigger. An unembellished slash in the mountains, the sheer, smooth rose-coloured rock pressed to within a foot of the cart’s tall ironbound wheels either side. The ravine walls towered to a height impossible to estimate in the blackness, which grew nigh impenetrable as they rolled on and on.

Dared they hope a toasty reception no longer awaited at the far end? This whole mountainous area was the heartland of Dragon territory.

Ashueli hissed angrily. “Can’t see my own hand in front of my nose …”

“Shall I get Sab – Yaarah?”

“That would be best.” Her taut tone communicated frustration.

Leaning close, the Fae whispered, “Take it from the resident expert in feeling small and useless, you don’t need to be down on yourself.”

“Says she who moves Middlesun?”

“Ah.” Allory began to hang her head but then, on an impulse, kissed her friend’s cheek instead. “Sorry, it’s … those old voices speaking. You know?”

“Aye!” Ash tried to disguise a quiver of startlement, but failed on that score. “Aye, I do. It’s just that – I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just blurt it out, shall I? I’ve always felt … used, I guess. Like my whole life has been reduced to a figure on a contract. In my head I know that’s wrong, but my heart cannot see past that scroll and what I imagine is inked on the bottom line. Suggids! That’s why I push myself so hard, see? It’s never enough. Your voice says, ‘I’m so small, what can I do? Mine says, ‘I can never be enough.’ Never. Not for Durc, not for my mother – much as I love her – and most especially, not for me.”

“Aye?” Allory encouraged.

Her friend made a wordless shrug.

“Maybe … maybe we should stop listening to those voices?” the Scintillant offered timidly.

“How?”

Whisper-soft it might be, her wail emerged from a place of unspeakable pain.

Allory grimaced. “I don’t have answers, Ash. Sorry, but I don’t. Tell you what. Let’s make a girly pact.”

“Ah … a what?”

“Oh, I’m sure that sparkly, girly pacts are unfamiliar nectar to this awesome Elven warrior Princess I happen to know, but she ought to understand –” Allory tried to iron out the squeaky tremor in her voice, regarding her nervousness with disgust “– that this is what best friends do. We help one another shut that suggid-slime out of our lives until it is completely done with. Erased forever. Obliterated!”

Got there in the end.

Moisture gleamed in the corner of those green eyes. Ashueli gave her a hand-hug. “You’re the best, Sparkles. Never forget that.”

“Not too shabby yourself, Sweetblades.”

Off she went to fetch Yaarah. A Felidragon’s work was never done.

Nor was a Scintillant Fae unneeded. Allory laboured at length over her patients. So many. Too little strength left, yet she gave all she could. She puzzled over the condition of the Elves, grey-haired older men, their mystical tattoos perhaps proclaiming them to be magic users. Ashueli did not know which Elven people they came from. After questioning the Princess regarding the paraphernalia present in the tent room where they had been found, she treated them with her best intuitive cleansing routines, which Chenixipi had memorably nicknamed ‘the full-on Pixie body scrub.’ Hope this worked on Elves, too.

They gave no sign of waking.

Not a good night. Harzune’s previously frozen arm turned a delightful mottled purple colour. Xiximay failed to wake, although her temperature improved from broiling to merely hot. Before Sabline slept, she admitted to being in considerable pain. Allory’s singing helped only a little. She worked over the other Scintillant Fae and her sisfae, trying but failing to understand the shadows she sensed lurking inside them. Her best guess was that these must signify the deep trauma they had experienced. Nothing that would be healed overnight. Faerie said that time was the greatest healer yet that was the one thing they did not have. Next came all the minor injuries suffered by the faithful Chameleons. Checking once more on Harzune, she sensed Zzuriel’s gaze resting upon her, dark and unreadable. Jealousy? Confusion? Not sure what she sensed from Frostbite.

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Another mystery.

Too many mysteries. Example? Amidst that insane melee, no weapon had touched Ashueli. None save Sabline’s hammer – she should check her nose in the morning. Bruised but hopefully unbroken was Allory’s visual assessment.

The cart jounced along, taking another steep, twisting descent. She slipped forward to check up on the Golden One.

He grinned and purred, “Still up at this late hour, hrrr-frrr?”

Too tired to argue or attempt any form of sassy sparkle, she made a noncommittal shrug as if the entire weight of Middlesun’s worries could be that easily shucked off her shoulders. Right. Simplicity itself. Allory said, “Busy night. How long until dawn?”

“Around three hours. You should catch a few winks, Sparkles.”

“It’s hard, Yaarah.”

She peered into the darkness, trying not to feel as if they crawled along an unending intestine somewhere in the underbelly of Spheris. The road, perhaps an ancient watercourse, curved gently left and right through this section. The surface and occasionally the walls showed signs of smoothing and widening to accommodate just this single cart. Allory had not yet seen an overtaking point, but neither had she been paying much attention.

“No point killing yourself – mrrr-grrr, reference previous discussion? Scrub that idea.” Extra-toothy grin. “Pace yourself, Allory Fae. We will get there when we get there.”

“Is that the art of self-evident wisdom?” she muttered wearily, stretching her back.

Deep ache.

“It’s wisdom. So is sleep. Inescapable wisdom, mrrr-frrrt?” He freed a paw from the traces attached to the lizards’ tails – apparently the way to control them – and stroked her back kindly, saying, “Everything looks better after a good sleep. Trust the whiskers.”

But I’m afraid of the dark.

No. Things that lurked in the dark, beyond the borders of sleep. Eyes that watched. Malevolent purposes that searched her out, perhaps seeking to lure her into the boneyard.

He added, “With Harzune, frrr-prrrt, one respectful suggestion. Use your instincts.” One furry digit tapped her atop the head. Annoying! “In this scholar’s detailed observational experience, your instincts are your most reliable weapon.”

“Weapon?”

“Put another way, Allory, you do your very best work with your heart. Now, grrr-hssst, run along before I swat you off to sleep.”

Sweeter than nectar, that Felidragon. Maybe he was right. Meandering back beneath the tarpaulin, she found that only a few Chameleon warriors were still awake – two watched over Zzuriel, shifting her bottle from place to place when whatever it was perched upon froze solid. The Diamond Fae slept. Had her dress changed from white ice to a white-diamond consistency? Stumbling over to Harzune and Xiximay, Allory sat cross-legged beside them and thought about what Yaarah had said. Too tired to think straight. She touched his cold, numb arm.

There must be a way.

Come on, Harzune. You have it within you.

Nerve damage. The idea burbled softly in her mind. The Healer Sage had taught her the basics of dealing with nerve pain and damage. To be fair, no Pixie had ever imagined healing by scintillation, but the Sage Inixipi had suggested that the nature of dust particles and light demonstrated certain strong similarities. Extrapolating from that, if she could simply provide a spark or make the right connection, should the body’s natural processes not take care of the rest?

Curling up, she rested her hand upon his shoulder and her head upon the sackcloth that formed his bed, imagining a living spark slowly passing from her hand into his shoulder and travelling down past those chunky biceps to his elbow, then tingling through his forearm and out along each of his fingers in turn …

* * * *

Bone fragments surrounded her, a macabre orchestra of clacking mandibles, ribcage xylophones and Giant thigh bone drumsticks.

Allory moaned in pain, “No, you can’t have it.”

Oily, viscous darkness stirred around the fringes of her consciousness, binding like a Faesilk cocoon blanket that a sleeper tried to kick and fight free of during a nightmare but could never quite escape.

The Faeling trembled like a helpless bud. “No, please, not the amsinthe … it gives me nightmares, Dadfae. Please no. Please …”

His face elongated obliquely, the semidarkness of their family cocoon turning it into a Ripper Baboon’s muzzle. Horror! Her legs spasmed. Run away! Flee! Run …

Scream!

* * * *

Allory shifted, waking to a muzzy awareness that her knee had just struck someone’s ear – oh, she had fallen asleep upon Harzune’s shoulder! Warmth stole into her cheeks. Shame she had not dreamed about such a lovely way of resting. No wonder she felt … embarrassed, for his hand reached over the top of her to draw a scrap of warm cloth someone must have thrown over her in the night, snug up to her shoulders.

“Shh, sweet girlfae. Everything’s alright,” he whispered.

How long had he been listening?

His highly polished war hammer stood beside his feet. Reflected in it, so close behind her they could touch and even might have if the tingling in her right foot was anything to judge by, Allory spied a reflection of Zzuriel’s face for a fraction of a second. Perfectly poisonous. Furious. Jealous?

Oh. Oh no!

Words snarled up like sticky gum in her throat. Not good. What had she done now?

“Who – what – what is this?” Xiximay awoke with a dreadful screech, flinching away from Harzune and Allory as if she had discovered herself stuck to a suggid’s slimy behind. “Who dared? I have a right to my personal space! Harzune –”

“Not me. Healer’s orders.”

“What?”

“I – I put you two together,” Allory explained, quailing as the Phoenix Fae’s natural fires waxed visibly.

“And then you tucked yourself in ever so sweetly,” Zzuriel added, with sarcasm fit to knock the Gates of Saradoom right over. “You can’t play with people like this, Allory Fae!”

“No, you can’t, you disgusting little flirt!” Xiximay growled.

Ice and fire glowered at her in concert.

She could not even ‘eep.’ No voice left. What an awful blunder!

“Now ladies, this isn’t what it looks like,” Harzune put in awkwardly. “Ooh, my arm does feel a great deal better. Amazing cure –”

“How lovely for you,” said the dark Fae, her hair bursting into flame as her temperature skyrocketed. “In my culture, we do not sleep alongside unmarried men. It is abhorrent!”

“Nor mine,” Zzuriel hissed. “That was a filthy, dishonourable act and a cruel deception.”

Allory curled up as if she had been struck. “No, please …”

The words struck again as an echo of her dream returned to lash her as her father had so often beat her limbs, usually her calves. Please not the amsinthe … Inixipi the Healer Sage had revealed that the Wraith loved amsinthe best. Could it be a Faerie, like her? Could she therefore be linked, similar, even be a host for the foul entity … no, no, nooooo!

She shuddered as never before.

“You tell her, Xiximay,” Zzuriel hissed, each breath she expelled frosting the air and falling as white dust around her bottle. Ice crackled across the cart boards it rested upon. Anger and passion, the fuel of great magic. The temperature beneath the tarpaulin dipped as she stormed, “You can’t just use people like that!”

“Use your gifts, do you mean?” she whispered.

“Which part of ‘I am cursed’ did you not understand?” the Diamond Fae yelled. Ice rocketed out of her mouth, riming Allory’s face. “I make storms when I’m angry, winter storms and ice blizzards and … and I kill people …”

Varzune cried, “You need to calm down!”

“I can’t stop it! This is what happens … every time!”

Fear flicked to fury. Shocking, the way it seized dominion of her mind. Before Allory could consider her actions, she reached for Zzuriel, intending to shake some sense into her as she had so often been shaken by her Dadfae. He had taught her too well. Bruise upon bruise. Engraved memory-scars upon her soul.

Ice blasted into her face, but at exactly the same time, a superheated hand gripped her ankle immovably. Xiximay! As she toppled, her fingers brushed the Diamond Fae’s hair. An abyssal chill speared deep into her Faerie flesh. Shooting through her and into the hand that gripped her ankle, it burst out of Xiximay’s body in the form of a cloud of azure sparkles.

Twinkly plus?

At once, the Phoenix’s flame exploded beneath the tarpaulin, yet it served to draw the cold out of Allory too. Pawing several times at nothing as she crawled forward, the Scintillant managed to gain a tenuous grip upon the bottle, acutely aware of her magic’s response, for soaring heat and withering cold could not coexist in the same place. Scintillation pulsed repeatedly through her body in both directions, as if she were the meeting point of two violently opposed sets of waves, causing her skin to tingle unbearably as the patterns blazed into fresh life.

In the greatest shock yet, the sensation did not consume her. Instead, the opposing forces smoothed out as if bending to the imperative of a melody no ear could hear, no heart could fathom, and no science could describe.

Nullified! They had nullified one another! She gasped. What …

Zzuriel subsided with a cry of surprise. Xiximay reformed successfully into her normal darkly dramatic Faerie form and did not contrive to collapse instantly, unconscious.

Everyone stared at everyone else.

Panting.

Dusting scintillance out of her sparkling hair, Allory stormed, “Xiximay, I apologise for forcing you to save Harzune’s arm! Suggids, I’m sorry – but asking permission sometime after his arm dropped off for real seemed like a poor option at the time! And Zzuriel, maybe by working together, you two could learn to cancel out some of each other’s more annoying properties? Even if it’s against your stupid flaming culture or your freaking frosty honour or whatever?”

Jaws dropped.

Ouch. Apparently, the essential elements in this equation had just become fire, ice and seething sparkles.